Caucasus Quotes

“Mounting tensions in Eastern Europe send shivers down the spine. Barely a quarter of a century after the end of the Cold War we seem to be sliding inexorably towards another.”
― Alex Morritt, Impromptu Scribe

“The Caucasus mountain range is probably the most variegated ethnological and linguistic area in the world. It is not a melting pot, as has been said, but a refuge area par excellence where small groups have maintained their identity throughout history. The descendants of the Mediaeval Alans, a Scythic Iranian people, live in the north Caucasus today and are called Ossetes. Iranian cultural influences were strong among the Armenians, Georgians and other peoples of the Caucasus and many times in history large parts of this area were under Persian rule. So it well deserves to be mentioned in a survey of Iran.”
― Richard Nelson Frye, The Heritage of Persia

“It is not, in the long run, the battles and sieges that signify, but the permanent effect on the human race of the changes they help to bring about.”
― John Baddeley

“It may be said without exaggeration that the mountains made the men; and the men in return fought with passionate courage and energy in defence of their beloved mountains, in whose fastnesses, indeed, they were well-nigh unconquerable.”
― John F. Baddeley

“As long as the forest stood the Tchetchens were unconquerable... and it is literally the fact that they were beaten in the long run not by the sword but by the axe.”
― John F. Baddeley

“Hospitality, as with all the mountain tribes, was - and is still - a most sacred duty; and the man who would slay a chance-met traveller without pity or remorse for the sake of trifling gain, would lay down his life for the very same individual were he to cross his threshold as even an unbidden guest.”
― John F. Baddeley

“...and to this day the rare traveller who knows the language and customs even of the worst of the tribes is safer amongst them than in the neighbouring Cossack settlements.”
― John F. Baddeley

“Об Азию расшиблись все попытки улучшения и образования; она решительно принадлежит не времени, а месту.”
― Александр Бестужев-Марлинский, Аммалат-бек

“The flouting of the greybeard is also a revolutionary sign. The absence of the men of experience from among revolutionary officials leads to many false moves that wiser heads would have avoided; but youth will have its fling, and in all ages and in all civilizations there is always a permanent undercurrent of revolution on the part of the young men who know everything, against the older men who are considered out-of-date and incapable of understanding their brilliant schemes of reform.”
― Lionel Charles Dunsterville, The Adventures of Dunsterforce

“The following day we walked again. Hiking through Truso Gorge, we followed a track lined with Siberian irises, raising their purple petals to the sun, and Prophet's Flowers, a relative of borage that is native to the Caucasus, their blooms strikingly yellow with maroon polka dots. Bubbling, iron-rich waters stained the rocks bronze, a tell-tale sign of the dozens of mineral springs buried underground. Butterflies flitted, wings shining orange and pink, past flocks of sheep and their canine guards.”
― Caroline Eden, Cold Kitchen: A Year of Culinary Travels